07/22/09 – Ran HaCohen – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 FM in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
Introducing Dr. Ran Hakkonen.
He was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Israel.
He has a Ph.
D. in Jewish Studies and is a university professor in Israel.
He also works as a literary translator from German, English, and Dutch.
As a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Akronoth.
Hakkonen's work has been published widely in Israel.
Letter from Israel appears occasionally at Antiwar.com.
That's original.antiwar.com.
Hakkonen.
Welcome to the show, Ron.
How are you, sir?
Thank you very much.
Thank you for inviting me.
It's very nice to make your acquaintance.
I've been reading your articles all these years and finally I have the opportunity to have you on the show here.
Thank you very much.
I hope my English does not disappoint you.
Well, I have to say this most recent article of yours at Antiwar.com, Fascism, Needs and Enemies, extremely strongly worded piece of writing here.
Obviously, the F word there has strong connotations of the Nazis and the Italian fascists of World War II, those who perpetrated the Holocaust.
And surely you use that term advisedly here, as hyperbolic as it may sound.
Is it really the case that what we have as a form of government in the state of Israel now is fascism, sir?
Well, the one good thing about fascism is that it rather escapes definition.
You know, some people call even, I don't know, the Soviet Union, the former Soviet Union a fascist state.
What I meant by fascism is something which actually exceeds the limits of democracy.
Lack of respect for minorities, not only to the rights of minorities, but even to the very existence.
And democracy only in some formal sense of the word, that is elections every couple of years, but not much more than that.
Lack of respect for human rights, lack of respect towards dissenting opinions towards minorities, as I said.
This is what I meant by it.
Well, and it's apparently, you know, through the rest of the article, the way you describe it, it's not just that Israel has barely crossed the line here.
You have a number of points that you make about, for example, the future of a possible Palestinian state, as far as the current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government are concerned, which is none, basically.
And you talk about the scapegoating and diminished rights afforded Israeli Arabs, as they're called.
Can you elaborate on some of that?
Yes, I think you described it correctly.
I don't think it's a new tendency, a new trend.
Netanyahu is not much worse than his predecessors.
His parliament, his Knesset, is considerably worse.
You know, Lieberman's neo-fascist party is the biggest party in parliament.
And you can see with time Israel deteriorating towards a situation where, as I wrote, enemies are fought.
The chances for peace with Israeli neighbors are diminishing with every week that passes.
Netanyahu has made it rather clear that there's no real reason for peace talks with Syria, because he's not going to return to Golan Heights.
And there's also no reason for true peace talks with the Palestinians, because he puts new conditions, as he told his father, just in order to thwart any possibility of the Palestinians accepting them.
And now you can see a trend of scapegoating, as you put it, of the Israeli Arabs.
You can even see it further here in Tel Aviv.
There's manhunt going on against illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from countries like Sudan or Eritrea.
You know, people are hunted on the streets.
And I think it's all part of the same tendency.
Basically, the Netanyahu government doesn't intend to concede a thing, whether in negotiations with the Palestinians, with the Syrians, certainly with Iran.
They're just going full steam ahead.
I think so.
I think so.
They are wise enough, some of them, not Lieberman, for example.
Lieberman, one cannot accept his views, but one could respect his honesty.
He more or less says what he means and means what he says.
This is not the way Netanyahu behaves and definitely not the way Barack behaves, Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
So maybe the two latter ones might be wise enough to present their policy as peace-seeking, but it is not.
It is definitely not.
So some plan reported in Haaretz, you never know whether it's going to materialize or not, to evict 20 or so, 23, I think, illegal outposts in order to gesture towards the Obama administration.
Because, you know, if Israel is conducting some kind of negotiations, it's always with the United States, not with the Palestinians.
So if the United States puts pressure, we might take a step forward.
But if you consider that these illegal outposts are about 100 in number, which is alleged to evict, and of these more than 100, 110, I don't know the precise number, about 70 or 80 percent are going to stay legalized, and some 23 or so are going to be evicted, some of them just a couple of empty hats or whatever, then you see where it's going to.
Israel's government has not accepted the conception that the West Bank is not Israeli, and Gaza is not part of Israel, and that these areas should be decolonized, evicted, and given to an independent Palestinian state.
And I think the whole world accepts this, what I just described, as a precondition or a condition for peace, and Israel does not accept it.
Well, and it seems that if Barack Obama and his administration really want progress toward creating a situation in the West Bank where you could have a viable Palestinian state of any description, that asking for, you know, tear down a few empty settlements, but leave 75 or 100 standing where they are, is a pretty bad place to begin a negotiation.
It seems like he should have demanded all the settlements close immediately, and then work and try to find some kind of middle ground with Netanyahu from there.
But when he concedes 90 percent of the argument to Netanyahu in the first place, and says, well, please curb the rate of growth of these settlements, and Netanyahu says no, then where else does he have to go after that?
Yes, it's a good question.
I wrote in my article that Obama has yet a long way to go in order to persuade, at least me and people who think like me, what his theory is.
I suspect, and you never know whether this is propaganda from Israel's prime minister's office, or an invention of the Israeli press, but I suspect that there's some kind of deal going on, or negotiations towards some kind of deal going on.
That is, Israel makes a symbolic gesture of evicting these 20 or so unimportant small outposts.
Evicting does not mean taking the settlers, about 1,200 in number I understand, who live there and bringing them back to Israel proper, but moving them to an adjacent settlement in the West Bank, you see.
So there might be a deal going on of Israel doing that, and in return continuing, being allowed by the Americans, to continue building in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank.
I suspect this might end up like this, showing some muscles, some pressure put on Israel to the Arabs in order to please them, but then things would return to the previous situation.
You know, the settlements have been there for 40 years by now, and ever-expanding, especially during the so-called Oslo peace process.
So the new American president, there's clearly a new atmosphere in the world, you can see it even in Europe, states like Germany, who are never critical towards Israel because of their historical burden, and for more real political reasons.
Even states like Germany openly criticize Israel's colonialist policy in the West Bank.
So there is a change in the world, at least.
I don't see a change in Israel's policy, not for the better at least, and I don't know how much political power and how much resolution the Obama administration has to really make progress in the Middle East.
Well, you know, it's interesting to me, the term land for peace, as always kind of stood out to me, it's occupied land for peace.
It's stop occupying for peace, rather than give up something that belongs to Israel, to the enemy in order to appease them, seems to be the frame of the argument.
Which sort of brings me to another point that you make in your essay, about the Israeli media and the public debate in Israel about these issues.
It's usually said here in the United States that, well geez, at least in Israel you can talk about these things, you can read great stuff in Haaretz.com, and these kinds of things.
So apparently there's a vigorous debate about all these issues in public, in the media, and in the public discussion in Israel.
And yet in your article you say that's really not the case, that basically everybody over there is Fox Newsed to death, just like we are.
I think that's true, I think that's true.
I mean, Haaretz is not the worst newspaper in Israel, but worldwide, you know, it's a good one.
It's rather good in terms of, yeah, liberal press.
But, yeah, it has never really been anti-government or really critical to it.
There are a couple of good columnists, some of them are already gone, like Meron Ben-Benisti fired just a few months ago.
I think one of the better critical columnists of Haaretz, he doesn't write for them anymore.
And those left, they are not men.
Furthermore, Haaretz is by far not the biggest Israeli newspaper.
I mean, like everywhere else, I guess, most Israelis, I don't think, most Israelis don't read a daily newspaper.
If they do, most of them read Yad Vashem, Ma'arif, or other popular newspapers.
Haaretz has, I don't know the numbers, but a small minority of Israelis read it.
And then you have television and radio.
And there, yeah, I could give an example, if you like.
Just a few days ago, there was a discussion on the radio in quite an old talk, a radio talk between two so-called representatives of the Israeli right and left, so to speak.
And the subject of the discussion was an Israeli organization of veteran soldiers who exposed atrocities, partly war crimes, in the last Israeli operation in Gaza.
Now, the two persons who run this radio program, I think one of them is supposed to be a right-wing, which he is, said those people should be beaten or killed.
And his co-speaker, who is supposed to be left-wing, said basically the same and called them a piece of shit or whatever.
Ah.
You see?
So the discussion is framed between almost two slightly modified versions of the same narrative.
Right, yes, that is just how it is here.
And then any person who has something to say outside of that frame is some kind of extremist, if those are both sides of the argument.
That's exactly how it gets talked about here, how any subject gets talked about here in America.
Yes, precisely where the media consumers get the impression that they get both sides of the discussion, you know.
Well, let me ask you about policy toward Iran.
I kind of feel like the boy who cried wolf on this show, debunking the case for bombing Iran for years and years on end, and nobody ever bombs it, and that either means I'm really great at it, or maybe the threat was never as imminent as I thought, and yet now there seems another wave of news stories coming in, implying that there's some sort of trade-off, that maybe Netanyahu will curb the rate of expansion of some of these colonies in the West Bank if Obama will let him start a war with Iran.
What do you think about that?
What do you know about how likely that seems from a perspective over there in Israel?
Honestly speaking, I have very little idea.
I have very little idea.
The discussions about that in Israel are limited mostly to colonies.
Those who are for it, those who are against it, I mean for bombing Iraq or against bombing Iran, I'm sorry.
And as for data, you know, anything which has to do with Israel's true military plans, especially where nuclear issues are at stake, are heavily centralized here in Israel, you can hardly get any true facts.
So it's mostly speculations, which I have very little to say, honestly.
I just hope they're not going to blow up the Middle East by bombing Iran.
Well, you know, it goes back to the thing with the media, because as it's been widely reported in the Israeli press and in the American press, the intelligence agencies of our two countries don't really seem to have any evidence or even belief that there is some kind of secret program that's enriching uranium to weapons grade.
And as the CIA and the rest of the American intelligence agencies say, the Iranians haven't even made a decision to really begin attempting to make nuclear weapons out of what is thus far a civilian nuclear program.
And yet, the entire debate takes place on the false premise that everybody knows they're making nuclear bombs, just like if we were talking about Saddam Hussein in 2002.
And so how are you and I to judge whether they really mean they're alive this time, when we know that they're full of it all along?
Precisely.
So one thing I noticed is that for as long as I remember myself, Iran is always about five years ahead of a nuclear bomb.
I mean, no matter when you are in the beginning of the 90s, Iran was five years ahead, and now it's three to five years ahead.
It's always, you know, the time progresses, and it's always about three to five years ahead of us.
And I agree with you.
I mean, we don't really know.
There's one thing we do know about nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and that I'm hardly allowed to speak about.
There's one country in the Middle East who, according to foreign press, as Israelis are obliged to say, does produce nuclear weapons, and that is hardly discussed.
There's one certainty in this equation which is hardly mentioned.
Well, and in fact, some low-level munchkin at the State Department, a new Obama team member at the low level, said something about, hey, maybe all the countries left that haven't should sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty, including Israel.
And boy, that was shouted down quickly and then ignored after that.
The whole controversy lasted about a day.
But there's something that's not in the discussion very often, that Israel is there with Pakistan and India in possessing nuclear weapons, oh, and North Korea in possessing nuclear weapons and yet not being a part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
At least North Korea used to be.
Precisely, and that's also one of the Arab demands.
I mean, President Mubarak of Egypt says it all the time, repeatedly, that the whole Middle East should be militarized nuclearly.
And these things are hardly taken notice of.
I guess, let me ask you about, what do you think about the future of the Gaza Strip?
Is there any chance that the blockade can be ended and that any sort of semblance of normal trade relations and goings-on can happen in Gaza as long as Hamas is in power?
Because as far as I can tell, it doesn't look like they're going to lose power any time soon.
And the attempt by Israel and the United States to arm up Fatah to win a civil war against them in Gaza a couple of years back obviously only backfired and consolidated their power even more.
And yet a million point something people there are locked in a giant prison.
And this can't continue indefinitely, can it, Ron?
I don't think it can.
Physically it cannot.
I mean, I have some information through non-public channels from Gaza and the situation there is horrifying.
Maybe not all people are starving, this would be exaggerated of course, but even the most basic medical treatment does not exist.
It's really an open-air prison, if we don't want to use the worst terms.
I don't know, I don't know.
Perhaps some kind of formula could be found between Abu Marwan and Gaza and then the Gaza leadership in order to change the situation.
I think Israel is doing its best not to allow such a development to come about.
I don't know what the Americans are doing in this messy issue.
I mean, I'm by far not only a fan of Hamas.
What they're imposing in Gaza is also a dictatorship.
It's not a free, the strip is not free, not even for the Palestinians.
But the situation cannot go on like this.
It's very clear.
Of course, part of it depends to some extent perhaps on the release of that Israeli soldier held there.
But it seems that Israel is not really interested in freeing him in return for Palestinian arrestees, prisoners in Israel.
It's difficult to say.
It's difficult to say.
What is quite obvious is that the situation is unbearable and that an international outcry should be launched in order to end that situation.
Well, are there specific demands that the Netanyahu government has delivered to Hamas that these are the conditions upon which we'll lift the blockade?
I don't think so.
No, I don't think so.
I think they are still saying we are not going to negotiate with Hamas under any circumstances except for freeing that soldier.
You know, I think that's where it stands.
The Palestinians have their demands.
They're not changing them, Hamas, and haven't changed them for as long as the negotiations are going on, about three years or so.
And Israel so far refuses to accept them.
I don't think the only reason for the blockade is that Israeli soldier held in Gaza.
He might play some role in it, but he's definitely not the only reason.
And basically, no, I don't think Israel is going to let Gaza become free in some form.
Gaza is becoming something that was in Israel's plan.
Gaza should be a sort of open air prison for all Palestinians.
Palestinians from the West Bank who did not obey were deported to Gaza.
And so the idea of a free Gaza is not going to materialize, I think, not if Israel were asked.
Well, forgive me my ignorance on this point.
There must be a thousand reasons why not.
It seems like perhaps one solution could be to put Gaza back under the jurisdiction of Egypt and just have the Egyptian security forces be the monopoly on power there so that the civilians of that land can trade and live their lives and things like that.
I doubt if the Egyptians want that.
I doubt if they want it.
If Egypt has enough troubles, even without Gaza, and just like Jordan won't take the West Bank back, I don't think Egypt would like to solve Israel's problems by annexing or incorporating Gaza into it.
I think they consider it correctly as an Israeli problem.
Remember that about 80 or 75 percent of Gazans are refugees from Israel.
They fled from Israel in 1948 into the small Gaza Strip, which cannot support them, such a large population.
What percent of the Gaza residents are refugees, you say?
About 75 or 80 percent, or one and a half million inhabitants of Gaza at the moment, are refugees or, of course, children and grandchildren of refugees who were deported or fled the southern part of Israel during the 1948 war.
Gaza was, of course, a small town.
It now became a real city in the Strip, one of the most densely populated on earth, but this is because of the 75 or 80 percent of refugees in Gaza.
I wouldn't know why Egypt should solve this problem of Gaza for Israel, because Israel created the problem.
Well, and can you conceive, is it your idea that the best thing for the Palestinians would be for the Israelis to go ahead and close all the settlements or some giant percentage of them in the West Bank and let the West Bank and Gaza be a so-called Palestinian state, the two-state solution, maybe with a subway tunnel between them or whatever, and is that, you think, the long-term solution to this problem, if people would listen to you?
I think, well, yes, this would probably, if it's still feasible, which I doubt, this would probably be the best medium-range solution.
On a longer-range scale, I would think of some kind of federation or confederation between Israelis and Palestinians, perhaps even Jordan, you know.
But, yes, the other option, which I basically do not oppose, is a one-state solution, that is, a democratic state, a single state for the Israelis and for the Palestinians, but it enjoys almost no support within Israel, and not even among the Palestinians, so the two nations are still in the nationalistic phase of identifying with a nation and not with a country, and the idea that they could live together in a single state seems, at this point of time, unreasonable, even though, in the long-term, it might be the best solution for all of them.
Well, as a libertarian, I like to think that if the government's role was not taking wealth and property and diverting it, but simply protecting the property of everyone equally, then it wouldn't matter whether it was Hamas or Fatah or the Likud party that ran the government, and everybody could get along in peace and harmony and trade and help make each other rich, and it would be great.
Yes, that's probably right.
What many people do not understand is that, for example, the settlements in the West Bank are actually an act of dispossession of the Palestinians.
So, even if one speaks of one state on the whole of mandatory Palestine, that is, Israel and the present-day occupied territories, one must remember that the water and the land in the West Bank is being unevenly distributed, that is, taken from Palestinians, given to Israeli settlers, and this should be solved even if there's one government running the whole thing.
All right, everyone, that's Ron Hockoen.
He writes the letter from Israel.
For Antiwar.com, he's a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Akronoth.
And has been published widely in Israel.
Thank you very much for your time on the show today, Ron.
I really appreciate it.
Thank you very much for inviting me.
Thank you.